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More Than Just a Wallflower
Those who abandon the Mission are Trash. But those who abandon their Comrades are worse than Trash.
Kaka-Sensei's decree, his Law, had stayed with Sakura, curled inside her heart and whispered by Inner whenever her thoughts went dark, ever since she'd first heard them. They hissed at her condemningly when she'd been forced to stay back with Tazuna is Wave, when her Teammates had moved forward to fight first the Demon Brothers, then Zabuza, then Zabuza again. They'd murmured to her during the Chunin Exam, tender during the first Test when her hand had started to raise, and had been roaring within her heart when those Oto-nin attempted to kill them. They had wistfully sighed during her fight against Ino, bitterly mumbled when she was abandoned during the next month, and then hissed like scalding water as she raced after a Biju for them.
They had kept her spine straight her hands steady, as she worked herself to exhaustion between visits to her comatose Sensei and Sasuke-Kun while Naruto was out getting them help. They saw her through rigorously practicing her Taijutsu, her kunai and shuriken, her hand seals. They chanted through her being as she spent hours in the library, studying pressure points and paralysis seals and he beginning of poisons.
They sang within her, urging her to train harder, work faster, be better. She didn't want to be the little girl left behind anymore. She didn't want to be the dead weight that pinned her Teammates feet to the ground. Kaka-Sensei had carved his Law into her mind and heart with a dull kunai since the beginning. Deep and ragged and permanent. And Sakura wanted nothing more than to not be Trash. She was a teachers pet, through and through. She craved the acknowledgement and support and positive reinforcement of those authority figures in her life, based a lot of her self-image and self-esteem on the urge.
But Haruno Sakura wasn't an Academy Student anymore. And she wasn't Kaka-Sensei's favorite. She had very low Chakra reserves, next to no Jutsu, and was so far behind her Teammates it was pathetic. But. But she was smart, and she had an eidetic memory, and she had Control, of herself and her Chakra and her emotions.
Those who abandon their Teammates are worse than Trash, her Heart and Inner stated, blank and grim and cold, as she stared at Sasuke as he stood ready to abandon everything for a Traitor, ready to become a Traitor.
(And since when did 'Traitor' and 'Trash' become synonyms in her mind? Since when did that line become so dark and unforgiving that this single act broke her heart and gave way to grim fury that Inner couldn't hold back if she Tried? When did her Love become this, this amorphous cloud of Trust and Team and Family, and when did it become so rigid that any betrayal would gouge that person from her heart so swiftly? Sakura didn't know, and Inner didn't care.)
"Take me with you!" She gasped, begged, even as she palmed a paralysis seal in one hand and a Chakra repressing seal in the other, her own Chakra curling tightly within her chest, ready to burst out in the signal all Academy Students memorized to summon higher-level shinobi to their location. Sasuke scoffed, shook his head, and moved towards her swiftly. Vaguely, distantly, as he moved, Sakura noted the reach for her neck, the pressure points there, even as her own hands moved, his red-eyes widening in realization that he was too close to react to what he could finally see. And, as she slapped the two seals onto the bare skin shown between shirt-sleeve and arm warmers, Sakura was bitterly relieved that he'd moved to knock her out instead of killing her.
That meant that he was salvageable, at least, she tentatively decided even as she caught his limp form, her Chakra flaring in the necessary pattern. Sakura didn't jump as an ANBU with the mask of a Owl appeared at her side, crouching silently as she lowered her Teammate to the ground.
"Genin Haruno Sakura reporting an attempted defection by Teammate Genin Uchiha Sasuke," she told the Owl simply quietly, mouth tight and grim to hold back any trembling. "Unknown number of enemy nin waiting to retrieve said Teammate outside the gate. Paralysis and Chakra repressing Seals used to detain." Owl's mask stared at her silently, body still and silent as the grave, before, in a flare-pattern of Chakra too quick and complicated for Sakura to note, three more ANBU appeared, a Hawk, a Cat, and a Tiger landing crouched behind Owl.
"Genin Haruno," Owl spoke, seals inside the mask warping their voice so that their gender was unknown. "Tiger will be taking the Uchiha to a holding cell. I will be taking you to report to the Hokage. Understood?" Once more, Kaka-Sensei's Law chanted through her Being, and Inner and Sakura joined to straighten her spine, harden her eyes, and meet that mask head on with grim acknowledgement,
"Hai," she agreed, and didn't flinch as, in a whirl of Shunshin so fast it seemed more like teleportation than speed, she found herself standing before Tsunade, the new Hokage's youthful face hard, her gold eyes glittering furiously as she met Sakura's own.
"Report," she ordered; Sakura did.
Later, after countless retelling, after facing off against the Council itself, after facing Naruto's denials and shouting and accusations, after all was said and done, Sakura found herself standing beside Kaka-Sensei, staring at the ground as they stood on the bridge of their Training Ground together. His hand landed gently, supportively, on her head, gently ruffling her kunai-cut hair as he did so, book no-where in sight.
"You did a good job, Sakura," he told her grimly, quietly, something tired and guilty in his voice as Sakura quietly leaned against him. "I'm proud of you." Sakura closed her eyes, tears finally allowed to fall, before turning and burying herself into her Sensei's torso, feeling his awkward hold on her shoulders as he continued to stroke her hair.
Those who abandon the Mission are Trash, Inner murmured, chanted, decreed within her.
But those who abandon their Comrades are worse than Trash, Sakura agreed, declared, carved into them both.
And she was not Trash.